Browsing All Posts filed under »Cover Design«

After soliciting feedback from followers of a couple of social media accounts, I’ve picked from the various covers I created for ATTEMPTED IMMORTALITY, the fourth novel in The Withrow Chronicles. Here it is!

I’ve had my head buried in grad school this month but I also have some super-fun news: the editing and cover design for are done and I’m waiting on Smashwords and Amazon to look them over. If everything is successfully vetted then I’ll officially make it available this weekend and it will get pushed out to Nook/iBooks/etc. […]

Attached to this post is the current in-progress draft of the cover for Tooth & Nail, the second Withrow book. It isn’t finished, and the fonts haven’t been chosen, but John Ward, my cover artist, has been working on the faces of Withrow and his insane cousin Roderick. It’s always fun to watch these develop. […]

I bought a sticker machine this week. It’s small and it was very inexpensive and I can use it to make either stickers or magnets. Yessssss. One of the marketing ideas suggested to me was small trinkets or charms to hand out to people at conventions. I think taking a big stack of homemade stickers […]

The title of this post is a quote from a fantastic blog post/interview/conversation between Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler. Eisler describes having walked away from a half-million dollar contract to self-publish after deciding he could do better on his own than with a traditional publisher acting as his promoter and gatekeeper. In it he points […]

The current issue of The Blotter is out and available in places where it’s normally available! Woohoo! In the meantime, I’ve uploaded Perishables to the Kindle store and am waiting some period of hours (12-48) before it’s really for-real for sale there and I’m tapping my toe impatiently because I already have realized things I […]

This is the initial rough sketch of a cover design done by John Ward. We’re collaborating in public on Google+ to get a cover worked out and I’ve really enjoyed this process more than I know how to say. John is very gifted and has done some amazing work. He absolutely nailed Withrow’s morphology and […]

+John Ward is designing the cover for my book Perishables as part of The Perishables Project, linked below. We’re going to be working through the process from initial conversations to finished project in public, on Google+, as an experiment for both of us. If you’d like to follow along, search for #jlwardcovers or ask to be added to my Book […]

The Perishables Project

Entering the contest was something of an experiment for me and success was intoxicating so I've kept going, self-publishing Perishables along with other things I've written and engaging in open-source marketing. I tell you what I do, why and whether or not it works. I also solicit marketing suggestions from readers. I document the entire process on this site.

Almost no one seems willing to give a guy a straight answer about how easy – or excruciatingly difficult – it is to sell a book. I’m finding out for myself and letting the world watch while I do. If I screw up royally and fall flat on my face along the way, no big deal: I consider failure as informative a result as anything else.